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Sugared Soft Drinks: Health Risk? (and What About Diet Soda?)
Sodas in 2-liter bottles

Sodas in 2-liter bottles

When I was a child, one of the greatest treats in our small world was to go to the five-and-dime (a store where many items used to be that price, kids! Example, Woolworths) which had a soda fountain, a long bar serving concoctions like sodas and milkshakes. One of my favorites was a cherry coke — soda water mixed with Coca-Cola and cherry syrup. Serving size for this very sweet drink was probably about 8 oz., or 250 ml. The combination of sweet and carbonation was out of that world! (In other words, a taste combination that stimulated evolved preferences for sweet but far beyond what was usually available in the diet we evolved with.)

Now, of course, sweetened sodas are available everywhere, and sold in much larger serving sizes. My brother was addicted to 7-11 Big Gulps — a massive 30 oz. soda for drinking on the go. Cane sugar was replaced by cheaper HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup) as corn was subsidized and sugar controlled at an artificially high price by agribusiness lobbying of Congress. Hamburger fast-food chains built an empire on burgers, fries (potatoes, also a high-glycemic-index food), and soft drinks.

There is evidence that high-carbohydrate diets in general, and sugar in particular, are the cause of the great increase in obesity. Even natural fruit juice and concoctions served in coffee bars have more sugar in one quickly-absorbed dose than is wise.

Politicians have attempted to reduce overconsumption of sweetened soft drinks by limiting serving sizes or proposing special taxes. Most people find these efforts intrusive and they haven’t gotten very far in the political system; like many pleasures, soft drinks don’t cause problems consumed in moderate serving sizes and only on occasion. Trying to force people to change their habits by law or regulation is unlikely to be very effective; widespread public understanding of the problem does seem to be working, however, as soft drink consumption is down and obesity seems to be leveling off in the US though still increasing elsewhere.

Scientists are still studying the effects of sugar on the body, and a recent study reviewed in Science Daily shows another downside of sugary drinks and the large blood sugar spikes they cause:

Research to be presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior (SSIB) finds that daily consumption of beverages sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup or sucrose can impair the ability to learn and remember information, particularly when consumption occurs during adolescence.

Both adult and adolescent rats were given daily access to sugar-sweetened beverages that mirror sugar concentrations found in common soft drinks. Adult rats that consumed the sugar-sweetened beverages for one month performed normally in tests of cognitive function; however, when consumption occurred during adolescence the rats were impaired in tests of learning and memory capability.

The lead author, Dr. Scott Kanoski from the University of Southern California, says, “It’s no secret that refined carbohydrates, particularly when consumed in soft drinks and other beverages, can lead to metabolic disturbances. However, our findings reveal that consuming sugar-sweetened drinks is also interfering with our brain’s ability to function normally and remember critical information about our environment, at least when consumed in excess before adulthood.”

In addition to causing memory impairment, adolescent sugar-sweetened beverage consumption also produced inflammation in the hippocampus, an area of the brain that controls many learning and memory functions.

Which confirms another hazard of frequent consumption of highly-sweetened soft drinks: a period of poor learning ability after each serving. Which is likely to give ammunition to schools that ban them in lunchrooms or vending machines.

But what about diet drinks sweetened with the usual artificial sweeteners like aspartame or sucralose? One concern has been that these drinks set off the body’s insulin release because they trigger sweet receptors just as sugar does, but the insulin causes more harm since it has nothing to work on — the body has been tricked. This theory has been used to support the idea that diet soft drinks will increase cravings for sweets and cause other problems that make avoiding them wise. But the evidence of this is very thin, one recent study showed no ill-effects, and I personally enjoy occasional diet soft drinks without problems. Most likely diet soft drinks in moderation cause few problems for those who aren’t sensitive to the specific sweeteners used.

Note that many sodas — and fruit juices like orange juice — are highly acidic and can erode tooth enamel over time. In other words, if you drink Diet Coke all day long, your tooth surfaces will quickly be decalcified and start to deteriorate. This is another good reason to avoid frequent consumption of these drinks.

For more on diet and weight loss:

Getting to Less Than 10% Body Fat Like the Models – Ask Me How!
Starbucks, Jamba Juice Make You Fat
Fat Doesn’t Make You Fat. Government Guidelines Did!
‘Fed Up’ Asks, Are All Calories Equal?
Fructose: The True Villain?
More on “Fed Up”, Sugar Subsidies, and Obesity
Another Study on Diet Drinks
LeBron James Cut Carbs for Lean Look
Why We’re Fat: In-Depth Studies Under Way
Almonds: Superfood, Eat Them Daily for Heart Health
Fish Oil Supplements Ward Off Dementia
More on Diet Drinks: Best Studies Show They Aid Weight Loss
Vani Hari: “Food Babe” and Quack
Cleanses and Detox Diets: Quackery
Gluten-Free Diets: The Nocebo Effect
Acidic Soft Drinks and Sodas: Demineralization Damages Teeth
Fish and Fish Oil for Better Brain Health
Salt: New Research Says Too Little May Be Unhealthy
Bulletproof Coffee: Coffee, Oil, and Butter for Breakfast?

More on “Fed Up”, Sugar Subsidies, and Obesity
Sugar in Processed Foods

Sugar in Processed Foods – UCSF

I featured Fed Up, the documentary in theaters now, in this earlier post. I noted then that while the film reinforces the emerging consensus that excess sugar and other high-glycemic-index sweeteners and fillers added to foods by processors to make them taste good is the probable cause for the obesity epidemic, that the film manages to avoid tagging the government’s role in demonizing fat, minimizing protein needs, and encouraging production of corn syrup sweeteners which are now used in *most* processed foods we can buy. On one hand the government subsidizes poor quality food, and the same people in Congress who keep the Big Agribusiness campaign contributions rolling in by spending $billions on farm and processor subsidies are ignoring their role in the problem and calling for taxes on sugared soda and other symbolic actions to make it look like they are “doing something.” (And don’t get me started on gasohol, which creates more environmental damage than it saves and drives up costs for both food and fuel.)

Reason covers this angle.

The New York Times takes note in an editorial.

Death by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples OrganizationsDeath by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples Organizations

[From Death by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples Organizations,  available now in Kindle and trade paperback.]

The first review is in: by Elmer T. Jones, author of The Employment Game. Here’s the condensed version; view the entire review here.

Corporate HR Scrambles to Halt Publication of “Death by HR”

Nobody gets a job through HR. The purpose of HR is to protect their parent organization against lawsuits for running afoul of the government’s diversity extortion bureaus. HR kills companies by blanketing industry with onerous gender and race labor compliance rules and forcing companies to hire useless HR staff to process the associated paperwork… a tour de force… carefully explains to CEOs how HR poisons their companies and what steps they may take to marginalize this threat… It is time to turn the tide against this madness, and Death by HR is an important research tool… All CEOs should read this book. If you are a mere worker drone but care about your company, you should forward an anonymous copy to him.

 

For more on diet and weight loss:

Getting to Less Than 10% Body Fat Like the Models – Ask Me How!
Starbucks, Jamba Juice Make You Fat
Fat Doesn’t Make You Fat. Government Guidelines Did!
‘Fed Up’ Asks, Are All Calories Equal?
Fructose: The True Villain?
Another Study on Diet Drinks
LeBron James Cut Carbs for Lean Look
Why We’re Fat: In-Depth Studies Under Way
Almonds: Superfood, Eat Them Daily for Heart Health
Fish Oil Supplements Ward Off Dementia
More on Diet Drinks: Best Studies Show They Aid Weight Loss
Vani Hari: “Food Babe” and Quack
Cleanses and Detox Diets: Quackery
Sugared Soft Drinks: Health Risk? (and What About Diet Soda?)
Gluten-Free Diets: The Nocebo Effect
Acidic Soft Drinks and Sodas: Demineralization Damages Teeth
Fish and Fish Oil for Better Brain Health
Salt: New Research Says Too Little May Be Unhealthy
Bulletproof Coffee: Coffee, Oil, and Butter for Breakfast?

‘Fed Up’ Asks, Are All Calories Equal?

The movie “Fed Up” is coming out in theatres — just saw Katie Couric doing publicity for it. Despite the popularity of spinning it as a case of corporate greed, I don’t see much corporate villainy here. I do see cheap foods that taste good pushed by government subsidies for Big Agriculture, plus a move to eat on the go. There are two problems with the “calories in, calories out” theory now amply disproved: first, calories of energy absorbed from food are not the same as calories of the same food burned in a bomb calorimeter. And second, the components of what you eat (notably high-glycemic-index carbs) can drastically affect your metabolism and cause you to crave even more, and to use less energy. “Eat less and exercise more” may be very difficult unless you change what you eat.

The New York Times story (also tie-in PR for the movie) goes on to say:

Dr. David Ludwig, the director of the obesity program at Boston Children’s Hospital, argues in the film that [all calories are not the same]. In recent studies, Dr. Ludwig has shown that high-carbohydrate diets appear to slow metabolic rates compared to diets higher in fat and protein, so that people expend less energy even when consuming the same number of calories. Dr. Ludwig has found that unlike calories from so-called low glycemic foods (like beans, nuts and non-starchy vegetables), those from high glycemic foods (such as sugar, bread and potatoes) spike blood sugar and stimulate hunger and cravings, which can drive people to overeat.

While people can certainly lose weight in the short term by focusing on calories, Dr. Ludwig said, studies show that the majority of people on calorie-restricted diets eventually fail. “The common explanation is that people have difficulty resisting temptation,” he said. “But another possibility is that highly processed foods undermine our metabolism and overwhelm our behavior.”

At Harvard Medical School, Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, an associate professor of medicine and epidemiology whose research was cited by experts in the film, said that the long-held idea that we get fat solely because we consume more calories than we expend is based on outdated science.

He has studied the effects that different foods have on weight gain and said that it is true that 100 calories of fat, protein and carbohydrates are the same in a thermodynamic sense, in that they release the same amount of energy when exposed to a Bunsen burner in a lab. But in a complex organism like a human being, he said, these foods influence satiety, metabolic rate, brain activity, blood sugar and the hormones that store fat in very different ways.

Studies also show that calories from different foods are not absorbed the same. When people eat high-fiber foods like nuts and some vegetables, for example, only about three-quarters of the calories they contain are absorbed. The rest are excreted from the body unused. So the calories listed on their labels are not what the body is actually getting.

“The implicit suggestion is that there are no bad calories, just bad people eating too much,” Dr. Mozaffarian said. “But the evidence is very clear that not all calories are created equal as far as weight gain and obesity. If you’re focusing on calories, you can easily be misguided.”

For more on diet and weight loss:

Getting to Less Than 10% Body Fat Like the Models – Ask Me How!
Starbucks, Jamba Juice Make You Fat
Fat Doesn’t Make You Fat. Government Guidelines Did!
Fructose: The True Villain?
More on “Fed Up”, Sugar Subsidies, and Obesity
Another Study on Diet Drinks
LeBron James Cut Carbs for Lean Look
Why We’re Fat: In-Depth Studies Under Way
Almonds: Superfood, Eat Them Daily for Heart Health
Fish Oil Supplements Ward Off Dementia
More on Diet Drinks: Best Studies Show They Aid Weight Loss
Vani Hari: “Food Babe” and Quack
Cleanses and Detox Diets: Quackery
Sugared Soft Drinks: Health Risk? (and What About Diet Soda?)
Gluten-Free Diets: The Nocebo Effect
Acidic Soft Drinks and Sodas: Demineralization Damages Teeth
Fish and Fish Oil for Better Brain Health
Salt: New Research Says Too Little May Be Unhealthy
Bulletproof Coffee: Coffee, Oil, and Butter for Breakfast?